


Poor Communication Kills

by decadent_mousse



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Drunk Sex, Emotional Constipation, Lots of alcohol, M/M, Miscommunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 17:41:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7901800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse/pseuds/decadent_mousse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh and Chris sleep together, Josh freaks out and does what he does best - make the situation ten times worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poor Communication Kills

The journey to Josh’s bedroom after a night of partying was always an adventure.  Especially when Chris was in tow, which was basically always.  Ride together, die together.  Collapse onto his bed together.  Wake up hungover together.  Occasionally throw up together.

"I'm jagerbombed, bro," Josh groaned.     
  
Chris rolled towards him and tugged at his shirt.  "Hey, man, are you alright?"   
  
"My brain is soaked in alcohol and caffeine, I am  _ perfect _ ."   
  
"You aren't, like, dying, are you?"   
  
Josh snorted incredulously.  "What?!  What are you talking about?”   
  
Chris pushed himself up on an elbow.  It took him a few tries.  "I read this thing online where someone--"   
  
Josh half-laughed, half-groaned.  "You need to stop reading things."   
  
"You'd tell me if you felt like you were dying, right?"   
  
"Nope.  I'd suffer in silence.  I'd face my death with dignity."   
  
Chris clung to his sleeve.  "Come on, dude, don't talk like that."   
  
He peered at Chris’s mournful expression out of the corner of his eye.  "You are so drunk."   
  
"I'm not!  I-- I’m-- okay, maybe kinda drunk, but this is serious, Josh," Chris slurred.  "If you're feeling funny you gotta let me know!  Promise me!"

"Funny how?  What exactly do you think's gonna happen?"   
  
"Well, the article I read said… if you drink too much caffeine and alcohol together, your heart could, like, explode or something."   
  
Josh laughed, hard.  He couldn't help it.  Holy  _ shit _ .  "Well, I'm pretty sure that hasn't happened."   
  
"Yeah?"   
  
He turned to look at him more directly and said, slowly, "Don't you think one of us might notice if it had?"   
  
Chris laid his chin on his shoulder, looking thoughtful.  The thoughtful silence stretched out for at least a solid five minutes.   
  
"I guess?  Probably?"   
  
"See?  It’s all good.  Chill out, bro, geez.”   
  
Chris's concerned face was so close he could see every individual eyelash that framed his eyes.  His heart fluttered.  Somewhere in the back of his mind sirens blared.  This was some dangerous territory, and he was a little too drunk.   
  
"Actually, I might be feeling… something."   
  
"What?  What is it?"   
  
Josh bit his lip, glanced down at Chris's mouth, then leaned in and kissed him.  Chris made a surprised noise, but didn't pull away.  Encouraged by this, Josh reached up to cup his face in his hands.  He felt Chris's arms wrap around his shoulders, and his heart leapt.  Holy shit, this was really happening.     
  
They rolled together across the bed.  Josh settled on top of Chris and rubbed against him.  Chris groaned against his mouth.   
  
"God, Josh," he panted when their kiss broke, cheeks flushed and eyes wide.   
  
Josh ducked his head.  "I've been wanting to do that for, like, forever."   
  
"You have?" Chris asked, voice soft.   
  
"I have."   
  
He smiled and caught Josh's mouth again.  His hands moved down his thighs, squeezing gently, and it drove Josh nuts in the best way possible.  

This was, hands down, the best night of his life.   
  
~

Within sixty seconds of waking up, Josh concluded that this was the worst morning of his life.  At the very least, it had to rank up there in the top ten.  He recoiled instinctively when he opened his eyes and bright sunlight poured into them like fucking laser beams.  His head was pounding a steady litany that sounded a lot like: "Fuck you and your terrible life choices.”     
  
He hid his face in his hands and slumped back against his pillow with a pained groan.  There were hangovers and there were Hangovers, and he had enough experience to already know he was in for the latter.  He froze, hands still over his face.  He suddenly realized he wasn't  _ alone _ in bed.     
  
He risked opening his eyes again, and when the sunlight seared his retinas a little less than before, he opened them a little wider and tried to focus on his surroundings.  It didn't help much, because the body beside him was more of an indiscernible blanket lump than anything or anyone identifiable.  It was breathing, though, which ruled out him having a wild night with a pillow.   
  
He wracked his brain, trying to remember the events of last night.  He'd drank --  _ a lot _ \-- towards the end of the night he'd gone to his room with Chris, and they'd--

There were several things he realized at that point.  The first was that he couldn’t remember what had happened after that kiss --  _ oh god, that kiss  _ \-- beyond a few vague impressions of skin on skin and more kissing.  The second was that he wasn’t wearing any pants.  The third, after he lifted the sheets to check, was that Chris was wearing even  _ less _ .   
  
This was bad.  It was so, so fucking bad.  He'd screwed up on a level that surpassed any of his previous mistakes, which was a pretty huge achievement.   
  
His flight-or-fight instincts kicked in and he scrambled to get out of bed so fast he got tangled in the sheets and hit the floor with a loud thud.  He sat there for a few seconds, partly out of shock and partly because it seemed like a good vantage point to look for his shoes.  Which turned out to be under the bed.  The bed that Chris was in.  Naked.  Mostly naked.  Fuck.   
  
Chris groaned as Josh searched for his socks, but he didn't wake up.  If they were both really lucky, Josh could sneak out before he woke up and maybe he wouldn't remember what had happened, either.  He couldn't decide if that'd make it better or worse.  Because he was pretty sure they'd had sex.  And it was something he had wanted, definitely, but not like this.  Not while they were both too wasted to remember later or to even really know what they were doing.  

It didn't feel right, running out on him, but none of it felt right.  His chest ached.  He'd thought about this, the two of them, together, but this wasn't what he'd wanted.  He'd fucked it up, like he fucked everything up.  He felt like he was going to puke.   
  
He was out the door before he was even done zipping up his pants.  Chris was still drooling into his pillow, oblivious.  Josh wasn’t even really sure where he was going.  He just had to get  _ away _ .

~

After that, Josh did what he did best -- he avoided addressing the situation at all costs, which for all intents and purposes meant avoiding Chris at all costs, which was a hell of a lot easier said than done.  It was hard to avoid someone who knew his habits and hiding places better than most people.  But if there was anything Josh was good at, it was avoiding his problems and as of their drunken sexscapade, Chris was one of those problems.  Or Josh was the problem.  There was a Problem, whatever the source, and that was all Josh needed to go into emergency lockdown.

Chris texted him, a few times.  Not about what had happened, just the usual shit like he would if they hadn't had a drunken one-night stand.  It was confusing, and irritating, and Josh had no idea what it meant.  Did he not remember?  Did he remember and was trying to pretend it’d never happened?  If Josh hadn’t been doing the whole avoidance thing, he would’ve asked.  He gave short answers and kept the conversations brief.  When Chris called, Josh just let it ring, stomach tying itself into knots the entire time until the thing would finally, mercifully go to voicemail.  Messages were left there, but he couldn't bring himself to listen to any of them.   
  
He hated it.  More than that, he hated himself for causing this mess in the first place.  Why was he like this?  Why did he always end up ruining the good things in his life?

~   
  
"Is everything okay with you and Chris?" Sam finally asked a couple days after The Mess had transpired.   
  
"Sure.  Why wouldn't it be?"   
  
"I don't know," Sam said.  "I just haven’t seen the two of you together much lately.”

"We have other friends," Josh replied defensively.  "We're not  _ always _ together."   
  
She gave him a look.  A look that said she could see right through his bullshit.  It was a look he was pretty familiar with, because Sam had an uncanny knack for it.  "True, but I saw you practically sprint in the opposite direction when you saw him a couple days ago.  And," she added, "he asked me if I'd seen you since Mike's party.  Kinda made it seem like  _ he  _ hadn’t.”   
  
He tried to keep his tone nonchalant.  "Did he... say anything else?"   
  
"About what?"   
  
He hunched his shoulders and picked at the hem of his shirt.   
  
She sighed.  "Josh, what happened?"

If he could tell anyone what had happened, it would probably be Sam.  Even if she disapproved of what they -- of what he -- had done, she'd listen, if he wanted to talk about it.  Which he didn't.  He really, really didn't.   
  
"Nothing.  Not-- anything important."   
  
"Yeah, okay.  If you say so."   
  
She was visibly dismayed that he wouldn’t open up about it, but hey, he was already destroying his relationship with Chris, why not add another to the list?  If he kept this up, maybe he could completely alienate everyone he knew before the week was out.

~

It wasn’t just Sam who was concerned, either.  His sisters, in their own subtle and not-so-subtle ways had probed for more information, but they didn’t have any better luck fishing the truth out of him than Sam had.

“You should apologize,” Beth said, one night, after family dinner.

The comment had caught him so off-guard he’d almost choked on his drink.  “What?”

She crossed her arms over her chest.  “To Chris.  You should apologize.”

Keeping his tone as neutral as possible, he asked, “For what?”

“For whatever you did.  I know, I know, you aren’t going to tell me.  But I know you did  _ something _ , and the sooner you guys make up, the sooner you’ll stop moping about it and we can all move on with our lives.”

“I’m not moping,” he protested.

“You’re moping.”

She was right, goddamn it.

~

All things considered, Operation: Avoid Chris At All Costs was going pretty well, if he didn’t count the deepening pit at the bottom of his stomach and his deteriorating mental health.  He’d managed to avoid actually facing Chris for several weeks, and he wasn’t sure whether to pat himself on the back or punch himself in the face.  Things almost began to feel normal, albeit unusually Chris-less, and he began to let his guard down.

Of course that was the exact minute disaster struck.    
  
He was at the mall, minding his own business, thinking more about lunch and a new pair of jeans than he was about keeping an ever-vigilant eye out for a certain blond, blue-eyed nerd.  

Like the one he realized was headed straight for him, just a few yards away.   
  
Lucky for him, Chris hadn't actually seen him yet, which meant he still had a chance to get away undetected.  He stopped in his tracks and frantically looked for an escape route.  There wasn't one.  The nearest store entrance would've involved sprinting  _ past _ Chris, at that point, and there wasn't an elevator or escalator in sight.  He was getting closer and closer, and Josh could practically hear a timer in his head counting down the seconds he had left to  _ do something _ .   
  
"Fuck," he breathed, as Chris's line of sight left his phone and moved upward...   
  
Josh dived to his left, sailing over -- or more accurately, through -- a row of decorative plants and crouching low on the other side, spitting a twig out of his mouth as discreetly as possible as he crept away, staying as low as possible short of crawling on his belly, hidden by the ferns and flowers.  He didn’t even dare peek over to see if Chris had passed by yet; he just got the fuck out.  It earned him more than a few weird looks from people walking by on his side of the plants, but it was a thousand times better than the alternative.

He creeped the whole way out of the mall like that.  When he ran out of rows of fake flora and fauna, he darted from potted bush to potted bush, kiosk to kiosk.  He nearly collided with an old lady who looked ready and willing to hit him with her purse.  By the time he reached the exit, he’d nearly mastered the art of looking nonchalant about it and not running people over.  

He would have been proud of himself if he hadn’t felt like such a coward.  

~

He was driving himself nuts with this shit.  He couldn’t keep dodging Chris forever.  More to the point, he didn’t  _ want _ to dodge Chris forever.  He wanted his best friend back.  Whatever had happened between them… they could talk about it, move past it.  He owed Chris that.  However bad he felt about it, Chris probably had to feel just as bad.  Probably even worse, actually, considering Josh had slept with him, left him without explanation, and had spent the past four weeks avoiding him like the plague.  

Jesus, he was such an _ asshole _ .  

He took a deep breath and picked up his phone.  Calling probably would’ve been the classier move, but Josh wasn’t feeling classy -- he was feeling guilty and miserable, and more than a little scared that he’d ruined their relationship with his terrible decision-making skills.  Texting was definitely the safer call.  Besides, Chris might not even take his calls after Josh had ignored all of his.

_ hey u awake? _

After half an hour, he began to think he wasn’t going to answer his text, either.  

_ Fuck,  _ his brain hissed.   _ Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck fu-- _

His phone chimed.

_ yeah _

_ srry i missed ur calls bro things’ve been kinda crazy _

_ are you okay? _

There it was again, that slithering feeling of guilt that felt like an actual living thing strangling him from the inside out.  Josh had been a complete douchebag and Chris was still being a concerned friend.  He didn’t deserve him.  If Josh hadn’t already been pretty sure of that before, he knew it without a doubt now.

_ yeah i’m ok.  u wanna get lunch tomorrow? _

He chewed on his lip before adding:

_ we could talk about stuff _

Chris was quiet for awhile.  Long enough that Josh half-expected the next message to be something along the lines of “go fuck yourself.”  Then...

_ ok _

They hammered out the details of when and where they’d meet up.  Chris was a little more terse than usual, but aside from that it was like any other texting conversation except for in all the little scary ways it wasn’t.  He wondered if Chris was just waiting until they saw each other face to face to rip him a new one.  He’d probably deserve it.

He put down his phone and closed his eyes, but it was a long time before he slept.

~

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so nervous about meeting up with someone.  He didn’t think he’d been this nervous on his first  _ date _ , and he definitely had never felt this nervous about meeting up with Chris.  It was  _ Chris _ .  Chris, whom he had slept with, had sex with, then ran out on and avoided for weeks.  Chris, who’d he’d been in love with for the past year, and had been in denial about being in love with for probably at least a couple years before that.  Chris, the guy whose friendship he had probably completely blown.

Jesus Christ, why did things have to be so complicated?  If this was adulthood, he wanted no fucking part of it.  His life had already been fucked up enough without this mess.

“Hey.”

Josh had been so absorbed in his spiral of  _ fuck fuck fuck  _ that he hadn’t noticed Chris had walked up.  How long had he been standing there?  How much of Josh’s quiet breakdown had he watched?

Turning around to look at him was harder than it sounded in theory, because once he did he would have to actually acknowledge that they were here, together, and then they would have to actually talk about what happened.  He settled for only sort of halfway turning around, still leaning against the railing and low-key wondering if jumping to his death was an acceptable alternative to talking about his feelings with another person.

“Hey,” he replied.  

“So… how have you been?  Haven’t seen you around much lately.”  

He detected a little accusation there, a little anger, and it made his heart sink.  It was still a lot less than he would have expected after his hit-and-run and all his avoidant behavior afterward.  If their positions had been reversed, Josh probably wouldn’t have handled this meeting even half as well, probably.  Then again, if their positions had been reversed, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place, because Chris would never have bailed on him.  

His throat tightened.

“Not great.”

Chris’s expression softened.  “Seriously, Josh, are you okay?”

Josh sighed loudly, exasperated.  “Really?”

He blinked in surprise.  “What?”

“After weeks, you just… ask me how I’m doing and that’s it?”

Chris looked confused.  “Dude,  _ I’m _ not the one who’s been avoiding you for weeks.”

“Exactly!  Shouldn’t you be more pissed off?”

“Well, I am  _ now _ ,” Chris replied, crossing his arms over his chest.  “I mean, yeah, I was… angry, I guess, but mostly just kinda… hurt, honestly.  Then you call me up after avoiding me for ages and I figure maybe I’d finally get some kind of explanation, but then I get here and you look like roadkill, so yeah, now I’m a little concerned.”

“I’ve been going nuts,” Josh frowned, stomach churning anxiously.  “I feel… really, really shitty about what happened, man.”

Chris’s expression had gone from irritated, to worried, to irritated again, to some weird vaguely sad look that confused the shit out of Josh in the span of about two minutes.  “You do?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“It wasn’t that big of a deal, Josh.  Just… just forget about it.”

“Forget about it?”  He pushed himself away from the railing and took a step towards him.   “Are you serious, bro?  How am I supposed to just  _ forget _ about something like that?  It’s done, it’s out there, it’s a thing that happened!  We can’t just pretend it didn’t!”

“Why not?  Can’t we just… pretend it didn’t happen and move on?”

Wow, and he’d thought _he_ was the avoidant one.  “Bro, we can’t just  pretend we didn’t have _sex_.  That’s kind of a big deal!”

Chris blinked at him.  “Wait,  _ what _ ?”

Okay, all those sleepless nights were starting to go to his head.  “Wait, what?”

"Josh… we didn't have sex."   
  
His heart fucking stopped.  "We didn't?!"   
  
"Wh-- no!  Is  _ that _ why you've been acting so weird?  You thought we had sex that night?"

"Well,  _ yeah _ ."  He let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding for the past three days.  "Man, I'm so relieved."   
  
"Crisis averted," Chris joked, but there was something in his voice that made Josh look up.  He looked fucking miserable.

Shit, no.  How Chris had taken it was not how he'd meant it, at all. 

"Hey, look, I’m-- I'm relieved because if we  _ did  _ have sex... it's something I'd want to remember.  I'd want it be special, you know?   Not just something we did one time when we were wasted."

"I felt the same way," Chris said.  "And that's why I said no.  You pouted, but then you, uh, passed out on top of me five seconds later, so… not sure how far we’d have gotten even if we’d gone for it.  And then when I woke up and you were gone... I thought maybe you were embarrassed and just wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened."   
  
"Dude, that's the exact opposite of what I want."

"Seriously?"   
  
"Look, I know you're, like, the world record holder for most oblivious guy, but I've been crushing on you pretty hard for awhile."   
  
Chris stared at him.  "Why didn't you just say something?"   
  
"In case you haven't noticed, I'm not good at this.  At all."   
  
"I noticed.  That move you pulled at the mall was pretty impressive, though.  Did you learn that in gym?”   
  
Josh ran a hand over his face.  "Shit.  I thought I was being sneaky.”

“Yeah, not so much.”

Well, that added a whole new level of embarrassment to this whole fiasco.     
  
"So how much do you remember about that night?"   
  
"Just bits and pieces," Josh admitted.  "I remember you completely freaking out about exploding hearts or something--" Chris briefly hid his face behind one of his hands, "--no, it was cute.  I remember kissing you.  I remember you kissing me back?  I think?  It’s kinda hazy."   
  
"Maybe this'll refresh your memory."

Chris leaned in, slowly, like he was still giving Josh an out in case he wanted to take it.  Yeah, like  _ that _ was gonna happen.  Josh closed the remaining gap between them and Chris made a startled “oh” noise before wrapping his arms around Josh and kissing him back.

It didn’t do much to refresh his memory of that night, but it did give him a pretty great one to replace it with.

**Author's Note:**

> I am a terrible person who chuckles to themself thinking about how much trouble Josh could have saved himself if he had just _talked to Chris_. Then again, it would've been a much shorter fic.


End file.
